Vol 3 comprises letters written by Sri Aurobindo on the experiences and realisations that may occur in the practice of the Integral Yoga.
Integral Yoga
Vol 3 comprises letters written by Sri Aurobindo on the experiences and realisations that may occur in the practice of the Integral Yoga. Four volumes of letters on the integral yoga, other spiritual paths, the problems of spiritual life, and related subjects. In these letters, Sri Aurobindo explains the foundations of his integral yoga, its fundamentals, its characteristic experiences and realisations, and its method of practice. He also discusses other spiritual paths and the difficulties of spiritual life. Related subjects include the place of human relationships in yoga; sadhana through meditation, work and devotion; reason, science, religion, morality, idealism and yoga; spiritual and occult knowledge; occult forces, beings and powers; destiny, karma, rebirth and survival. Sri Aurobindo wrote most of these letters in the 1930s to disciples living in his ashram. A considerable number of them are being published for the first time.
THEME/S
The mountain is the symbol of the embodied consciousness based upon earth but rising up towards the Divine.
The mountain always represents the ascending hill of existence with the Divine to be reached on the summits.
The mountain always means the same thing—it is the ascending consciousness.
The mountain is an image of the ascending consciousness.
The mountain is a very usual symbol of the consciousness with its ascending levels. The flowing of water from the peak indicates some flow from the higher consciousness above.
The mountain represents the ascending planes of the higher consciousness. The journey in the train is the passage from one consciousness to another.
The bucket is the physical consciousness; milk is always a symbol of the flow of consciousness from Above; the mountain is the Adhar with its ascending levels from the physical to the Above.1
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The golden mountain is a symbol of the ascent to the Truth.
The Golden Mountain is always the mountain of the Divine Truth which one has to ascend—at its summit is the dwelling place of the Divine.
The experience of the great expanse of golden light on a mountain-top came because I had asked X to aspire for the higher experiences of the consciousness from above. The symbolic image of the mountain with the light on its top comes to most sadhaks who have the power of vision at all. The mountain is the consciousness rising from earth (the physical) through the successive heights (vital, mental, above-mental) towards the spiritual heaven. The golden light is always the light of the higher Truth (Supermind, Overmind or a little lower down the pure Intuition) and it is represented as a great luminous expanse on the summits of the being. X by concentrating on the light entered into contact with the higher reaches and that always gives these results, peace, joy, strength, a consciousness secure in the power of the Divine. It is of course through the psychic that she got into this contact, but in itself it is more an experience of the higher spiritual consciousness above mind than a psychic experience.
The silvery narrow way upward is the path of the spiritual consciousness.
Patala simply means the subconscient below the Earth—the Earth being the conscious physical plane.
You had asked the other day about the subconscient, what it was. In the vision you describe you were shown the universal
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subconscient in the figure of Patala, a place without light of consciousness and, because universal, therefore without bounds or end—the dark unconscious infinite out of which this material universe has arisen—it is walled with darkness on all sides, it seems also to have no bottom. The Light comes from above from the higher consciousness and coming down through the mind and heart and vital and physical has to pour down into this subconscient and make it luminous.
"Patala" is a name for the subconscient—the beings there [in a dream] had no heads, that is to say, there is there no mental consciousness; men have all of them such a subconscient plane in their own being and from there rise all sorts of irrational and ignorant (headless) instincts, impulsions, memories etc. which have an effect upon their acts and feelings without their detecting the real source. At night many incoherent dreams come from this world or plane. The world above is the superconscient plane of being—above the human consciousness—there are many worlds of that kind; they are divine worlds.
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